Mumberthrax

Intro Create a pvp-enabled survival server to run on the event server for two weeks minimum. Include a handful of plugins to make the game interesting* and more balanced pvp-wise. Have an early target end-date in mind before launch, and announce it publicly. *(Interesting = environmental challenges from extra hard mode, mineralvein, & monster apocalypse) Plugins Include: the extra hard mode plugin monster apocalypse mineralvein (the one they use on civcraft) antixray and orebfuscator grief prevention nerdspawn (with random-radial spawn enabled and a handful of respawn locations around the map) pwnpvpbalance and/or redwall's combatrebalancer cobracorral vehicleraid mylineagepvp nocheat plus (disable chat spam filtering) pwnfilter (or just let griefprevention handle chat spam filtering) clanchat enchantism pearlnerf combat tag (or ideally something like it that spawns an NPC anytime anyone logs off - regardless of whether they were technically in combat or not; griefprevention has a combat tag config but it kills players instead of spawning an NPC and only happens while recently in combat) botany (because trees) moblimiter whatever plugin P uses to boost passive mob drops Optionally include citadel for those who want to reinforce stuff outside of GP claims. mylineagepvp would basically allow users to be pve if they want, passively discouraging PKers, but rewarding consensual combat. If you want links to or descriptions of any of these plugins let me know. ***Some plugins may require tweaking for MC 1.8 but I'm pretty sure all of these are open source and permissively licensed*** Configs Generate the world with roguelike dungeons. set "extra hard mode" plugin to nerf grinders. plump xp by a ton for mobs/ores. Enable siege mode in griefprevention. Possibly disable the nerdpoling nerf in extrahardmode. Definitely change the extrahardmode notifications to the chat window and not scoreboard. Find that damned plugin that stops snow golems from generating snow unless they're on obsidian. Monster apocalypse should be set to make mobs identify the player from farther away if nothing else. Use a relatively flat biome for spawn - like plains or savannah - to decrease fps/lag issues for those who want to pvp near spawn. Include warps at spawn to various locations around the map. Include warps with a 10 second warmup back to spawn at those points. These could also be the nerdspawn respawn locations. This warmup thing could easily be done with CH. Don't make spawn too elaborate or too big - KISS. Keep the rules straighforward too - e.g.: "don't be a dick. No cheating (fly/speed/pvp/xray hacks, etc.). Don't be a dumbass - if it isn't a fair fight, nobody is going to have fun." Put a melon farm at spawn. Consider putting a tree farm at spawn that autoplants saplings - so new players have access to lumber (worldguard and/or wgcustomflags for this). Make /help not ugly like it was on S, make it actually informative. Don'ts Don't mess with economy stuff. Don't mess with bounties. Don't mess with pvp ranking plugins unless it is polished, refined, not spammy, and easy to use. Don't mess with prisonpearl. Avoid dependence on LWC - consider not using it at all in favor of GP locked chests (LWC has rare chances to fail, exposing items assumed to be secure). Don't use safebuckets - it isn't needed with griefprevention. Don't make cardinal roads. Precautions Extra hard mode will respawn the end dragon periodically, so warn people about attempts to make end grinders. Roguelike dungeons have lots of mob spawners. ensure extra hard mode is set to nerf grinders - and/or worldguard protect the roguelike dungeons except for breaking certain blocks to gain entrance/escape (wgcustomflags plugins can help with this). I haven't tested monster apocalypse on a server with many players so pay attention to TPS and such while using it and adjust spigot settings like mob view distance and the like - pay attention to player feedback - it should be challenging, not pointless. If someone is obviously intentionally causing lots of mobs in dungeons to spawn, warn/ban them - or find a way to limit the maximum amount of aggressive mobs in a chunk. Concerns Grief Prevention will cancel the threat from monster apocalypse in terms of mob griefing protected bases. Grief Prevention will disable tnt use above sea level, making mining for coal initially fairly challenging... extra hard mode's torch nerf will favor people using gammabright and xray mods. Grief Prevention provides a method to teleport to spawn if a player is stuck - I'm uncertain if it works outside of GP regions which might be an issue if citadel is used. Make sure mobs are actually spawning at a reasonable rate for mild threat and reasonable ghast tear collection - play the game at ~peak hours (or alternatively buff tear drop rates) antixray plugin may be an issue if players tnt a very large diamond vein. Experiment and tweak accordingly. Blah blah Run this as an event, not a regular server. Invite pve regulars to try it out. Do this after activity on P from the new rev has died down some, so as not to detract from it. After a little while ACTIVELY gather feedback. Pester people not through in-game automated notifications, but say "hey, hey... hey joe. fill out this survey so we can do better." Or do it automated and provide an incentive"fill this survey out and get a couple blox of tnt and two diamonds." but only do it after the server has been up for a few days. Make the survey easy to fill out, and not too long, and allow for open-ended written responses. Make results visible to public either live or within three days of the end of the event. Make a fancy post introducing the event with nice headers and bullet points, with a quick summary at the top. Optionally set up some control points (like, ten or something) and let individuals/clans establish dominance over them to gain fame and mild buffs (i don't know what plugins for this there are, so consider it a low priority compared to getting the event up and running) Consider using that plugin from the CTF that added special blocks - basically for a speed-boosting block for players to make roads with. Consider providing a convenient source for gunpowder/sand/tnt, for mining with extrahardmode enabled. I don't know what the padmins have planned for their story this revision, but consider integrating this event with it somehow, to encourage p players to try out the event for a little bit and hopefully increase the ratio of adventure-style players versus "imma fuk u up" types. This is not about trying to replace P or steal P players, it's about setting tone. Maximum kit loadouts (this is basically what limits are set on permitted enchantments for armor and weapons, as well as brewable potions and their effects) This is where I'm inexperienced and the pwnpvpbalance/combatrebalancer/mylineagepvp plugins may alter the dynamics. go with vanilla. gather feedback. adjust. pay attention. watch for: evenly matched combat durations, armor/weapon damage, repair costs. Combat should be not too long, not too short, and players should not lose all of their gear just from fighting in a single match. Moderation Once the server is open, let it go with little moderation - mostly for chat/harassment and pvp "hackers". Grief shouldn't be an issue with grief prevention(+citadel) - if someone tears up natural terrain or makes swastikas just use GP's natural regeneration tool on it and do whatever with the "griefer" seems reasonable. Warn people using pvp/fly/speed hacks to disable them before banning. Don't be afraid to start muting/kicking trolls/toxicites for being dipshits in chat. Are private player notes a thing yet? They need to be for easier tracking of troublemakers without giving them a scarlet letter. orebfuscator and antixray should weed out many xray issues. Seriously, if someone is being a dick repeatedly, just ban them. Nerd may be a place of second (or twentieth) chances, but it doesn't mean you gotta let assholes ruin the place. A pvp server doesn't get a free pass on assholeism. Admin: exercise discretionary powers wisely, always in the interest of fairness and fun. if a rule is inhibiting creativity and/or fun in a specific instance and the reason for the rule in this particular case is not exceedingly clear, exercise discretionary powers. Fairness and fun. Fair and Fun is camping a worthy opponent's base and defeating them against odds. Unfair and mildly fun for only one party is camping an unworthy opponent and preventing him/her from playing in the way he or she prefers. This is also called "being a dick" and it applies at spawns, bases, or anywhere else. If someone is distraught enough to complain in global chat, leave them alone. If they're complaining despite being evenly matched, then they aren't going to be fun to fight anyway if they're a sore loser. Anyway, mylineagepvp plugin should help with some of this. Ending the event Ceremony or no ceremony, up to you. The point is having fun in the middle if nothing else. Gather feedback and use it for whatever survival server planned for the future. Having something interesting to look forward to at the end of the event might help encourage activity in spite of the announced end date. Closing This is some relatively easy stuff that can be thrown together for a mildly interesting relatively-low-maintenance pvp-enabled event. I don't really see any downsides to trying it. If anyone has suggestions for improvements please share. If any admins have any opinions, please share. Forum moderators, please remove any comments that are drifting off-topic or overly dramatic. Also, I'm not heavily invested in this. I just always kind of wanted to use extrahardmode+griefprevention+monster apocalypse on a server with nerd-quality moderation/community peeps and figured I'd jot this down and throw it out there. Edit: actually, I just want to play with the better TNT from extra hard mode. o___o Edit2: also, some stress-testing was performed on a testing spigot server running on my dinky laptop with extra hard mode tnt and worldedit (and grief prevention). Giant cubes of TNT+redstoneblocks were created. Spigot did a wonderful job of keeping the explosions asynchronous and the server was fine, as was my laptop. Also the overworld surface was pristine despite the new massive cavern below. Rest easy.

On survival the main reason for enchantism, plumped xp, and /unenchant was that you burn through pvp kits very quickly if you actually pvp regularly. A game where you are playing for combat is not fun when 90% of the time you're sitting at a grinder, 2% of the time raging because the crappy enchanting table gave you a useless enchantment (this was before 1.8). On the last revision on S that I played, Texastormenture had a popular public iron grinder right next to spawn, and there was almost always a public End grinder that people *generally* treated as a PvE zone - because we *wanted* good fights with well-geared players (some people like to ruin things so this wasn't universal). But you're right that most grinders were generally not public since the general feeling of the server was more competitive and clan/individual-oriented.

Getting prismarine and sponge is supposed to be a challenge to work toward - getting gear, water related enchantments and potions. Finally defeating the guardian should be an accomplishment to be proud of. This is impossible to experience if all ocean monuments of the map are made into grinders or are claimed for private use. Designate one monument as protected from grinderitis, charge admission to the biggest game hunting adventure on the open seas. Regenerate damage done to the monument periodically. No worries about "duping" the blocks since massive grinder projects already do that. Grinders, for better or worse, are part of the vanilla Minecraft experience - and they are invaluable for enchanting and resource acquisition. Minecraft *is* a game where adventure matters though. Preserve this for those players who want it in the mix.

I am not convinced that iron golem spawners, slime spawners, player skulls, posable/armed armor stands, plumped ores, glowstone in the overworld, clay underground, etc. are vanilla. The server does have a strong history of being mostly vanilla though.

@avada: worldguard has a flag that allows you to enable/disable fire spread per region. hmm maybe I am not understanding fully. @zomise: definitely would need to have some stipulations in order to prevent things like a city owner suddenly enabling fire spread for the entire city.

I don't mind nearly as much as before 1.8. That said, I've been roving around the map searching for mobs to kill for xp and it took me what felt like hours to get to level 30. I don't know if that's a reasonable chore/cost or not. Technically I needed to do it three times in order to get my enchant table to give me a fortune pick - once to get it to allow me to enchant with fortune 3, once to enchant it at level 30, and another time to get enough unbreaking 1 books to combine to get u3. I don't know if this tool is supposed to be seen as overpowered (justifying the grind) or not. having played a lot of modded Minecraft, it doesn't feel like it is, but maybe I am spoiled.

So I was able to set up a test server with worldguard installed to produce an effect like example #8 by setting the "tnt" flag or "other-explosion" flag to deny. I'm uncertain what nerd/P currently uses to deny tnt explosions - if anything other than preventing their crafting. A little bit of internet searching brought up these plugins: http://dev.bukkit.org/bukkit-plugins/worldguard-custom-flags/ http://dev.bukkit.org/bukkit-plugins/worldguard-playerdamage-flags/ http://dev.bukkit.org/bukkit-plugins/worldguard-explosion-flags/ Problem is that the player damage and explosion plugins are out of date enough that they don't function (i tested, the allow-damage flag works, but deny-damage doesn't show up in the flag list, nor does deny-explosions) . Good news: they're under GPL and source is available. https://github.com/mewin/WGCustomFlags https://github.com/mewin/WGPlayerDamageFlags https://github.com/mewin/WGExplosionFlag I don't know how challenging it is to update the plugins for 1.8. This doesn't seem to be an overly complicated plugin so maybe it would be possible.

Because sometimes you have a lot of jungle you want to clear out. Maybe have it enabled only for a limited duration unless explicitly requested otherwise. edit: I feel bad bringing this one up since the trees on this map are so nice. I really was thinking about previous maps where I've been involved in projects that required clearing huge tracts of land by hand, producing more lumber than was ever used. doing that several times gets old.

TNT is a fun decorative block. Once upon a time I had a mine i wanted to snazz up with decorative TNT but because it was banned, I could not. #1. It doesn't have to explode. It doesn't have to react to redstone. It just would be a plain block with the TNT texture. OR #2. Allow the TNT to explode visually/audibly, but do not damage to blocks or entities and cause no movement of entities. OR #3. Allow the TNT to explode visually/audibly, but do no damage to blocks or entities - AND allow it to shove entities a way a bit, so you could have aesthetic TNT cannons for those inter-city play-dramas. OR #4. Allow the TNT to explode but do not damage to blocks or players - but permit damage to hostile mobs. OR #5. Allow TNT to explode, doing damage to blocks but not entities/players - only inside a region where the region owner has modreq'd for explosions to be activated. OR #6. Allow TNT to behave as it does in vanilla minecraft - but only in PVP-enabled regions where the region owner has explicitly modreq'd full TNT availability. Edit: OR #7. Allow TNT to work as in vanilla minecraft - but only below sea level (like y50 or something) and only outside of protected regions. Use as a griefing tool would be treated like we treat any other grief. See "grief prevention" plugin for an example of this as a default config option. (this is not my favorite of the options, but it would enable convenient use of TNT with minimal moderator involvement for mining and such) Edit2: OR #8. Permit TNT to explode visibly/audibly, do damage to and shove entities, but not damage blocks. Allow this in PvP enabled regions only. Edit3: added numbers for convenience

Hardly anybody uses this subforum. Lots of ideas for improvements get discussed in global chat over the course of a revision. How many of those ideas actually get to the desk of the people who could make them happen? People are lazy. Who wants to go through the trouble of logging into a website and make a post for something that should already be on the server? Not a large fraction of people - and that's ok. So give these creative/brilliant/lazy gamers an easy way to give you, the admins, feedback in-game. Example: "/suggest please allow players to modreq fire spread in owned regions" this gets piped into a database, some script posts it to this suggestions forum, maybe the forum specific to the server the command was run in. The post can contain the username of the person suggesting it, a timestamp, etc. and the user gets a link to it. If they want to elaborate or clarify, they can post a response. Extra fancy but not required: give the user the option to receive notifications in-game if they get a response on the forums. Abuse of the command would be treated like we handle any other abuse of nerd services.

A lot of times I am passing by in the wilderness, want to say hi to someone but don't know how to spell their name, or am juggling a few other PMs, so i find myself just saying "hello" in global to whomever and having a little conversation because it is easier - this may annoy other people who are not nearby if global chat is busy - which is common. Or maybe I am helping a new player, and they don't understand PMs. telling them to just prepend /L before their messages to talk only to people nearby trying to help might be convenient. Or maybe I am passing through a town and want to ask anyone who lives there a question about their town, rather than ask "is anyone from ___ online?" in global, or join their town's clanchat - if they have one and if I can figure out what its called, and then later leave the channel - I can just use /L to local chat. This wouldn't be a replacement for global chat. It would behave like a clanchat channel does. When you use it, it shows your messages to anyone within a specified radius - maybe something like 50 meters, or maybe more or less. I do not know what plugins exist which have this feature. I would be willing to bet there are several commonly used ones. I imagine if the techadmins want to they could probably even modify clanchat or make some new thing with CH to achieve the same results. But it might be easiest to just look around first. Sorry I haven't done the legwork. I know in the past, back before clanchat was even a thing, both local and clan chat ideas were brought up and the head admins at the time shot it down because it would detract from the sense of community felt by everyone participating in global chat. I do not think this fear has manifested in reality since the introduction of clanchat. I think local chat should be adopted on a trial run for at least one full revision.

Just another friendly bump.

You know that is actually a very good solution. I created this proposal back when we were in 1.7, when barrier blocks were not a thing. Forgot all about them. That seems like a dead simple solution, really. If someone modreqs for a pvp region, just use WE and cover it with barrier blocks - problem solved. Brilliant.

it would also deny people pearling while inside the region, which is an impediment to some PvP strategies, and a non-vanilla experience.

buzzie's response that I posted in my comment above is the only followup I saw.

under review Padmins (PvE Admin, Nerd.nu PvE) responded · December 21, 2014 We’re investigating the possibility of revising PvP criteria. -buzzie71

Allow pvp areas to be built without being entirely enclosed with walls and roof, but still prevent players from entering except at the specified iron doors by using WG regions. Require *some* kind of barrier to provide a visual demarcation of the region and to prevent players from believing they could casually walk into the area (eg. a fence, a wall, etc.). This way the pvp areas can be open on the top, or have more creativity and freedom of aesthetics in design, open air wilderness themed arenas would be possible for example. The way this can be done is relatively simple. In addition to setting up the WG region as usual with the PvP: allow flag, an admin would create a second region shell outset from the pvp region by 1 meter, with the entry: deny, and enderpearl: deny flags. The pvp-enabled region would have entry: allow flag set and its priority set 1 integer higher than the shell region (eg. /rg setpriority regionname 1). Then set up an easy-sign behind the normal iron door+button entry area to teleport players into the region, and set up an easy-sign immediately adjacent to that location inside the pvp region to teleport them out. There is no way that players can enter a pvp area without seeing a sign warning them, no way that players can be tricked into being killed, and pvp area designers have much more freedom than having to have a 6-sided container to completely enclose the area. Its an almost negligent increase in the amount of work for the admin, is not susceptible to abuse, is not any less vanilla than using WG regions to enable pvp and rules restricting build design in such cases anyway, does not affect the "the map must be free to explore" rule as pvp areas are already completely inaccessible except via the iron doors with warning signs. And its trivial to implement immediately. Requires no additional plugins. Here's the current policy statement on the rules page: Here's my proposed revision: The flags to be set would be: Inner region: pvp allow, enderpearl allow, entry allow outer region: enderpearl deny, entry deny The inner region would have an elevated priority. /rg setpriority regionname 1 The easy sign command would be just a simple teleport command, just enough to pass through the entry-deny region into the pvp area, and conversely back out again through another sign with a simple teleport command of the same kind.

ahh I see. That makes some sense. I don't keep up with steam trends but assuming it's true then it makes sense.

I have a crazy conspiracy theory. There is a person who has subtle influence over members of the admin team, who plots and nudges people in the direction of his/her preference. This person likes playing cs:go more than garry's mod or tf2. Like, a few hundred hours-worth more. This person may or may not have influenced other *unusual* decisions in the past from members of the admin team. Like I said, crazy. Probably not worth paying attention to.

Seems odd that focus would be given to cs:go when, based on the data you linked, only 39 (55 total for all CS games) people responded favorable to it, compared with 59 for tf2, 93 for garrys mod. As well, between those three, counter strike received a slightly greater amount of "no" votes. 29 "don't want it" on counter strike, 26 "no" on garry's mod, and 21 "no" on tf2. The "no opinion" counts were comparable on all three, slightly lower on tf2.

Nice. Thanks Dumbo, and thank you for letting us know, Mrloud. This thread can probably be locked/archived now.

Well I would go back and look through all of the open ones, but it seems you guys have closed the account down without transferring the suggestions over to the new suggestion sub-forum. Generally I was curious if there were any forum discussions at all about any of the suggestions in the uservoice page, or if it was just whoever was active on IRC when the topic came up would opine, or if they got any discussion at all. Schererererer mentioned at one point here on the forums that he had forgotten the uservoice existed, so I got the impression that there wasn't any active discussion in IRC/Mumble that he was a part of as head admin. The main ones I remember existing were: the suggestion about creating the suggestion subforum which I made on the uservoice page the suggestion I made about opening a modded server up the suggestion that was most highly voted on about opening a modded server up and I think I recall a suggestion about not closing suggestions without explaining why But if i recall correctly there were about twice as many as that on the page in total, I just don't recall what they all were and have no way now of going back to check on them. Were any of them backed up before the account was shut down?

Just noticed that one more post from my list was moved over to the archives a few days ago: https://nerd.nu/forums/topic/2938-pmc-survival-features-survey Nifty. I'll cross it off my list from the number 5 spot. Thank you for moving it, Mrloud. I also would like to publicly thank Barlimore here for reaching out to me via IRC on the 19th of June about this, and for all the work he's put into transparency. Thank you, Barlimore. Edit: Switch, you're awesome too for responding above, and for whatever pestering you did. Thanks. : ]